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Cape Town – The taxman received altogether 5.74 million tax returns by close of Friday November 25 2016 – the deadline for submissions for non-provisional taxpayers.

The breakdown of the returns received is as follows:

- 4.16 million submissions by individuals for the 2015/16 tax year;- 47 000 submissions by trusts for 2015/16 tax year; and- 1.52 million returns for previous tax years from individuals and trusts.

In his medium-term budget policy statement delivered on October 26, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said revenue collections for the first half of 2016/17 have fallen sharply below expectations – mostly due to shortfalls in personal income tax.

Of all the various tax collection measures, personal income tax was the worst-performing one with a R3.9bn under-collection, by and large due to lower-than-expected pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) receipts.

During the current tax filing season:

- the Sars contact centre handled more than 3.6 million calls;- Sars branch offices assisted more than 5.1 million taxpayers;- Sars processed 99.9% of all returns electronically;- 92.4% of tax returns were assessed within 3 seconds;- 93.28% of refunds were paid to taxpayers within 72 hours;- 173 000 taxpayers made use of the Help You e-File channel, 15% higher than in 2015; and- 44 373 made use of the Sars mobile application to submit their 2016 tax returns.

In addition, Sars imposed penalties to the value of R1.64bn on defaulting taxpayers.

Altogether R15.5bn in tax refunds was paid to 1.98 million taxpayers by the tax season deadline.

In his mini budget, Gordhan announced tax hikes to the value of R13bn in the 2017/18 tax year -over and above the R15bn increase already announced in the February budget this year.

That will bring the total tax hike next year to R28bn. The tax measures and specific raises will only be announced in the February 2017 budget.